Immortals

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Toothpicks were much larger in those days

It just won’t die, the stream of movies about beings who just won’t die (gods, vampires, Kim Kardashian). Henry Cavill, good at looking conflicted in a codpiece for The Tudors, here plays lowly villager Theseus. He’s mortal yet buff thanks to training by a mysterious old man – in fact the shape-shifting Zeus (John Hurt/Luke Evans/’Beaky’ the Eagle), who’s otherwise hands-off in human affairs.

After King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) murders his mother, Theseus sets out for revenge. Hyperion heads a ruthless Heraklion army (don’t call them Cretans) who are slaughtering Hellenes (they’re all Greeks to me) and searching for the Epirus Bow, a weapon of immense power. Only scrumptious oracle Phaedra knows its location, but she’s soon giving Theseus some diviner intervention.

The story is messy and only tenuously related to Greek myth, and you won’t care about the characters. But the visuals are spectacular, especially the fight sequences of balletic dismemberment. 6/10

2 responses

I enjoyed immortals for what it was. I liked it for the action, and for the visual appeal. The lead actor did a pretty good job with what he had to work with, but I felt that the story just didn’t come together like I was hoping. But the movie ended up being just what I expected.

I went in to the movie expecting to see some good action scenes. After seeing the trailer around ten times or more I knew I would enjoy the action, the slow motion sequences and the visual style in general. My friend told me that the lead actor was actually the boy in the count of monte cristo with jim caviezel. I found that bit of trivia interesting.

I thought mickey rourke did well in his portrayal as the bad guy but I must admit there wasn’t a lot of depth to him(not mickey rourke’s fault). He played the ruthless tough bad guy pretty good I thought, with plenty of grunts and gruesome acts. So the build up to his show down with theseyus was pretty fun to watch. But for much of the movie he’s sitting around trying to extract information from people or giving orders to underlings.

Now the gods from olympus I found very interesting. They have special powers of course and look down on events from mount olympus. In my opinion if the movie focused on the gods and their intervention into human affairs it would make for a much more interesting movie. Especially considering how zeus responds to certain actions that made by others in this movie.

In my opinion if you want to see some pretty cool looking action sequences, especially during the end then go see this movie. But be warned this is not an epic war movie in the vain of 300, troy or even something like kingdom of heaven. This movie will slow down, sometimes agonizingly slow. But if you like seeing movies with greek mythology(or greek mythology like elements) than you will probably enjoy this movie.

Hopefully someone will come along and build off of the things that immortals and clash of the titans does right, then we will truly be in for something special.